What Goes Around Comes Around

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This is a story about John Deere unstyled model L (USL) rear
wheels. Not too long ago I bought a tractor that was located in a
tumbled down shed, it had bus wheels and tires bolted to the
cut-out centers of the original wheels. Along the inside wall of
the shed were the wheel parts that had been cut off (or so it
appeared). 600 x 22 tires (one blown out), solid rims, and outer
cutout wheels. This looked a little too easy, but I thought that
all I had to do was weld the wheel halves back together, do a
little grinding and the little tractor would be back on its
original wheels. When I got around to putting the wheels back
together, I soon found out that two cuts had been made on each
wheel and the pieces from the second cut were missing. So much for
quick and easy.

Dennis Prillwitz was showing me around his place and pointed out
a pair of USL wheels that someone had cut out and welded on truck
rims. Dennis said that because new 22 inch rims and tires were not
available for many years, the only choices were to adapt other
wheels and tires to the tractors or scrap them. He then said in an
offhand manner that no one ever bothered to save the cut-off
pieces. When I told Dennis my story, we measured his wheels and
'guesstimated' that his inner cut-offs would overlap my
outer cut-offs, and between us we had enough parts to make two
wheels. We traded some parts around and I ended up with Dennis'
inner wheel cut-offs.

Somewhere I read or saw an example of a useful rotary table that
could be built in the shop. The main part of the table was a large
used ball bearing assembly. I got mine from a re-builder of large
machines. Weld three large nuts, hex are okay, square are better,
on end and evenly spaced around the edge of the outside race. Weld
three more nuts on the other side of the bearing on the inside
race. Weld a square steel plate to the nuts on the outside race for
the base of the table. Weld a round steel plate to the nuts on the
inside race for the table top. I use my table mostly for truing up
wheels during the re-rimming process, so I welded three bolts on
top to match the wheel bolt pattern of the Model L tractors.

After cutting off the truck rims and cleaning up the slag and
rough edges, I put Dennis' inner wheel part in my handy-dandy
rotary table fixture. Next I placed the outer wheel piece on top of
the inner wheel piece and carefully rotated and aligned the two
pieces so that there was almost no runout. After clamping, I used
the outer piece as a template to cut the inner piece. The result
was a very good fit up of the two pieces that were easily welded
together to produce good as new wheels.

There seem to be more USL tractors than rear wheels, so I was
very happy to be able to end up with a good set, thanks to Dennis
Prillwitz, a rotary table and a few welding rods.

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